Literary Imagination Advance Access published August 6, 2016

Challenges and Strategies for

Analysing the Translation of
Fear in Horror Fiction
CLOTILDE LANDAIS?

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When asked what comes to their mind when they hear “horror fiction,” many people
probably answer by giving titles of novels such as The Shining or The Exorcist, or names
of authors such as Stephen King or William Peter Blatty. Some may tell you that it refers
to a scary reading. Although “scary” and “horrific” are quite different, both qualifications
are similar inasmuch as they refer to a particular level of emotion in the reader’s mind.
Noel Carroll describes horror as being “compounded by revulsion, nausea, and disgust.”1
Such a feeling is provoked by an encounter with a monster for instance, or by a specific
action. Whenever a fiction’s main goal is to induce such emotion in the reader’s mind, by
analogy, it has been labeled “horror fiction” by publishing houses and bookstores.
However, because horror can have many different causes, some books labeled “horror
fiction” will be dealing with realistic threats, such as domestic violence, madness, or serial
killers, whereas others will be dealing with supernatural threats, such as vampires, were-
wolves, or ghosts. As horror is a degree of the more general feeling of fear, along with
terror, anguish, fright, dread, etc., I will from now on use this generic term of “fear” to
refer to the feeling that authors of horror fiction, supernatural or not, want to induce in
the reader’s mind.
Because horror fiction aims at generating a specific feeling in the reader’s mind, it is a
matter of reception. It thus relies mainly on two narrative mechanisms which must work
together for a successful reception: a lifelike effect and suspense. A lifelike effect, which
Roland Barthes named “reality effect,”2 is evoked at least in part by a “seemingly func-
tionless detail [. . .] presumably mentioned for no other reason than the fact that it is part
of the reality represented.”3 In horror fiction, the reality effect is a key feature as it
prevents fear from becoming laughter or a shrug.4 It is produced through an abundance
of connotations of the real, which creates verisimilitude: descriptions and details to make
a place familiar or identifiable to the reader, precise time and space of the narrative, and

?
Clotilde Landais, 1845 Alydar Drive, West Lafayette, IN 47906, USA. E-mail: clandais@purdue.edu
1
Noel Carroll, “The Nature of Horror,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 46, no. 1 (1987): 53.
2
Roland Barthes, “L’effet de réel,” Communications 11 (1968): 84–89.
3
Gerald Prince, Dictionary of Narratology (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003), 81–82.
4
Yves Meynard, “Comment ne pas écrire des histoires,” Solaris (2003), http://www.revue-solaris.
com/pour-les-ecrivains/dossier-special-comment-ne-pas-ecrire-des-histoires/.

Literary Imagination, pp. 1–13

doi:10.1093/litimag/imw018
ß The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics,
and Writers. All rights reserved. For permissions please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com
2 Clotilde Landais

coherent characters’ textual identity and psychology. The reality effect also happens in
dialogs: vocabulary and syntax have to be in harmony with the situation, the age, or the
social identity of the characters. A successful reality effect is thus the main condition for
readers to willingly suspend their disbelief5 and to put themselves in the place of a
character and to experience what the character feels.6 A successful suspension of disbelief
and character identification due to a successful reality effect allow the reader to continue
reading and thus to experience the second narrative mechanism necessary to a proper
reception of the text, that is, suspense.
Suspense has been defined by Brewer and Lichtenstein7 as a discourse organization

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which generates a psychological response in the reader. When the reader knows more
than the characters regarding a given initiating event or situation, s/he can then anticipate
the possible consequences of this event or situation, which creates an affective response in
his/her mind. As horror fiction aims at creating an affective response in the reader’s mind
as well, the narrative mechanism of suspense is then closely related to the inducement of
the feeling of fear in the genre.
These two narrative mechanisms, the reality effect and suspense, are usually carefully
thought through by horror fiction authors. However, all books are not read in their
original language. In 2009, in France for instance, 8–12% of all published books were
originally written in another language. If such books only count for 2–4% in the United
States or in Great Britain, they represent up to 25% in Italy.8 Translation is thus a critical
component of the book industry. Thanks to translators, readers can enjoy stories written
in almost every language and discover any culture they want, whereas otherwise, they
would be restricted to a limited number of stories and authors. However, changing a text
from one language into another, or “interlingual translation” as Roman Jakobson9 calls
it, is not a simple matter. Practitioners have been arguing over its principles for more
than two thousand years. The oldest debate, which still appears in contemporary argu-
ments,10 opposes the supporters of a literal (or “word-for-word”) approach, based on the
idea that languages and cultures are naturally equivalent, and the supporters of a more
liberal approach, also known as a “sense-for-sense” approach. The initial supporters of
this second, more aesthetically-pleasing approach were the Roman politician and rhet-
orician Cicero (1st century BC), the poet Horace (first century BC), and the monk St
Jerome (fourth century AD). St Jerome is particularly important for translation theory as
he was the first to question the choice of a literal strategy for the Latin translation of the

5
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907).
6
Paul E. Jose and William F. Brewer, “Development of Story Liking: Character Identification, Suspense,
and Outcome Resolution,” Developmental Psychology 20, no. 5 (1984): 912.
7
William F. Brewer and Edward H. Lichtenstein, “Stories are to Entertain: A Structural-Affect Theory
of Stories,” Center for the Study of Reading - Technical Report 265 (1982): 14.
8
Michael Oustinoff, La traduction (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2009), 47.
9
Roman Jakobson, “Aspects linguistiques de la traduction,” in Essais de linguistique générale, ed. Roman
Jakobson (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1963), 78–86.
10
Jeremy Munday, Introducing Translation Studies: Theories and Applications (New York: Routledge,
2012), 29.
 The Translation of Fear in Horror Fiction 3

Bible as he himself opted for the sense-for-sense approach. From the nineteenth century,
following Friedrich Schleiermacher’s impulse, translators such as Lawrence Venuti or
Antoine Berman have started to go beyond this initial dichotomy by including the
reader in their choice of strategy: a translation can either move the reader toward the
author, “foreignizing”11 the target text by breaking some conventions of the target lan-
guage in order for the target reader to feel the foreignness of the source text; or it can
move the author toward the reader, “domesticating”12 or “naturalising”13 the target text,
that is bringing the target text as close as possible to the target reader. This latter process,
which makes the translator—and the translation—invisible, is favored in the United

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Kingdom or in the United States14 for instance, where the reader is led to believe that
the text s/he reads has been directly written in English and not translated.
Such opposite views on translation can only but impact on the translated work. In
horror fiction, where narrative mechanisms such as the reality effect and suspense are key
to generating different degrees of fear in the reader’s mind, the translator’s choice of
intervention has direct consequences on the target text’s reception. Translators of horror
fiction must find the right balance between foreignization and naturalization for instance
because, according to Paul Ricœur, the “resistance on the side of the reader must not be
underestimated. [. . .] I have used the psychoanalytic term ‘resistance’ to convey the sense
of this deceitful refusal to have the language of reception subjected to the test of the
foreign.”15 This resistance may be even greater in horror fiction as the genre is supposed
to provide an easy read, and some readers may not be willing to make the necessary effort
required by the foreign. It is only if the translator’s choice conveys the emotions intended
by the author of the source text that the reception of the target text does not suffer from
the translation process. However, if the translator’s choice prevents the reader of the
target text from feeling what the author intended, then the translation fails from the
perspective of reception—not the sociological or ideological reception of a group, but the
individual reader’s reception: if the reader of a horror story does not feel any degree of
fear, then the horror story has no purpose.
Drawing upon textual and cognitive approaches, this article will present some of the
challenges faced by translators of horror fiction as well as some possible strategies in order
for the reality effect and suspense to happen as originally intended by the author of the
source text. The study of several French translations of English-written horror fiction
narratives will help to illuminate the role of the translator in the reception of fear in the
individual reader’s mind.

11
Lawrence Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation (New York: Routledge, 1995),
20.
12
Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility, 5.
13
Antoine Berman, L’épreuve de l’étranger. Culture et traduction dans l’Allemagne romantique. Herder,
Goethe, Schlegel, Novalis, Humboldt, Schleiermacher, Hölderlin (Paris: Gallimard, 1984), 62. Berman
borrows the verb from Charles-Pierre Colardeau, Foreword to the poem “Seconde Nuit d’Young,” in
Oeuvres choisies de Colardeau (Paris: Janet & Cotelle, 1825), 101.
14
Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility, 1.
15
Paul Ricœur, On Translation (New York: Routledge, 2006), 4–5.
4 Clotilde Landais

According to Stephen King, the first key elements of a successful reality effect are
description and dialog, as “description [. . .] creates a sensory reality for the reader and
dialogue [. . .] brings characters to life through their speech.”16 Descriptions may seem
appear to translate; since contemporary horror fiction is by rules of the genre set in our
contemporary world, a possible strategy for translators is to find external documentation
such as a picture which represents the place, being, or device described in the story. Such a
strategy can help with the translation—especially if the description is very technical—and
create in the reader’s mind a picture as close as possible to the one given by the author in
the source text. The following example comes from the short story entitled “Stray Dogs” by

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James Cooper. The main character suffers from the Renfield’s Syndrome which has evolved
into its second stage, zoophagia, where the blood of live animals is sought. In order to
acquire such blood, the character drains blood out of his dog, Jojo, using Vacutainer tubes:
I reach into my pocket and retrieve the Vacutainer tube, which I’ve already attached to the
needle. I pull off the protective cap and apply pressure about three-quarters of the way
down Jojo’s neck where the furrow is deepest. The vein bulges outward, even through the
hair, and I insert the needle, applying just enough force to break through the skin. [. . .] I
push down on the Vacutainer tube, the double-ended needle piercing the rubber cap.
There is an adjustment of pressure in the tube and then Jojo’s blood begins to flow. [. . .] I
wait until the Vacutainer tube is full and then pull another one from my pocket and attach
it to the holder.17

[Je prends dans ma poche le tube Vacutainer que j’ai déjà relié à l’aiguille. J’enlève le
capuchon de protection et applique une forte pression aux trois-quarts inférieurs du cou de
Jojo, où la ride est plus profonde. La veine se gonfle à travers les poils, et j’insère l’aiguille
avec juste assez de force pour percer la peau. [. . .] Je pousse le tube sur l’aiguille qui perce
le capuchon en caoutchouc. Il y a un ajustement de pression dans le tube, puis le sang de
Jojo se met à monter. [. . .] J’attends que le tube soit plein pour en sortir un autre de ma
poche et le connecter au support.]18

The translator of Cooper’s short story needed to do some research regarding Vacutainer
tubes for two main reasons. First, to find the technical vocabulary related to the tube;
second, to understand how such tubes work to better translate the technical description
and create the same atmosphere as in the source text.
Such a strategy more generally allows for compensating the translator’s failings; it is
indeed impossible for anyone to be familiar with every place, being, or device that exists.
Unlike what many people think, research is a critical aspect of writing and, consequently,
of translating. To turn to external documentation is thus a good strategy to translate
descriptions and dialogs, notably when technical.
Descriptions and dialogs can, however, still be a challenge because they may be deeply
anchored in the culture of the author. Therefore, we can ask ourselves what will become

16
Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (New York: Scribner, 2000), 163.
17
James Cooper, “Stray Dogs,” Black Static 33 (2013), 15.
18
James Cooper, “Chiens errants,” in Ténèbres, trans. Clotilde Landais (Nancy: Dreampress.com, 2014),
223.
 The Translation of Fear in Horror Fiction 5

of this reality effect in translation. According to André Lefevere, “translation is not

primarily ‘about’ language. Rather, language as the expression (and repository) of a
culture is one element in the cultural transfer known as translation.”19 The question
is all the more relevant in horror fiction, especially in the supernatural variety in which
the feeling of fear, as the result of the acceptance of supernatural phenomena by readers,
relies precisely on a successful reality effect. Stephen King, who is known to use a lot of
American cultural references and brand names in his stories, is a good example for this
question. Thanks to movies and TV shows, the French readership may know some of the
cultural references King mentions, but they cannot know as many as the American

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readership does as most of them do not live in the United States. According to Jean-
Daniel Brèque, one of King’s translators in French, translators have three possible strat-
egies for translating these cultural references, which he calls “artefacts.”20 We will see that
each option, if valid in a given context, may present some problems in a different one
and should be thus carefully weighed.
The first strategy given by Brèque is to keep the cultural reference as such in the
translated narration and add a footnote. This would be the easiest solution and it would
satisfy the supporters of foreignization, as such a reality effect would move the reader
toward the author’s universe.21 However, it makes the narrative look like an essay, which
is very harmful to the second necessary mechanism of horror fiction, that is suspense.
The following example, coming from the short story “The Raft” by Stephen King, shows
how such a choice of strategy would ruin suspense. Four teenagers—two boys and two
girls—swim to a raft on an isolated lake. As they reach the raft, they notice a weird oily
patch coming toward them. Shortly afterwards, one of the girls falls into the water and is
swallowed by the thing. One of the boys decides then to try and swim back, but before
he can dive, the thing sucks him through the boards of the raft. The excerpt comes right
after the death of this boy. It is thus a moment of extreme tension as the reader realizes
that the other two characters are not only trapped on the raft, but they are not even safe
on it:
“What are we going to do, Randy?”
He thought.
“Wait,” he said.

At the end of fifteen minutes he stood up and let her first sit and then lie down for half
an hour. Then he got her on her feet again and she stood for fifteen minutes. They went
back and forth. At quarter of ten, a cold rind of moon rose and beat a path across the
water. At ten-thirty, a shrill, lonely cry rose, echoing across the water, and LaVerne
shrieked.

19
André Lefevere, Translation, Rewriting, and the Manipulation of Literary Fame (London: Routledge,
1992), 57.
20
Jean-Daniel Brèque, “Traduire Stephen King,” Ténèbres 4 (1998): 61.
21
Friedrich Schleiermacher, On the Different Methods of Translating (London: Routledge Translation
Studies Reader, 1992 [1813]), 41–42.
6 Clotilde Landais

“Shut up,” he said. “It’s just a loon.”22

[« Qu’allons-nous faire, Randy? »
Il réfléchit.
« Attendre », répondit-il.

Au bout d’un quart d’heure, il se leva, la fit d’abord asseoir puis la laissa s’allonger une
demi-heure. Ensuite il la fit se relever et elle fit le guet pendant quinze minutes. Ils se
relayèrent ainsi. A 10 heures moins le quart un froid quartier de lune apparut et com-
mença sa route au-dessus du lac. A 10 heures et demie, un cri strident, solitaire, retentit,
renvoyé en écho par les eaux. Laverne poussa un hurlement.

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« Ferme-la, s’écria-t-il. Ce n’est qu’un plongeon[1]. »
1. Oiseau palmipède. (N.d.T.)]23

For the sake of the reality effect, the translators of the short story chose to keep the
cultural reference to the loon by merely translating its name into French. Nevertheless, as
a loon is a bird native of North America, they assumed that this specific bird is not
known from most of the French readers; the footnote then explains that it is an aquatic
bird whose toes are connected by webbing. However, they could have avoided this
explanation if they would have used the complete name of the bird. “Loon” indeed
translates in French as “plongeon huard” and is commonly known in French Canadian as
“huard,” “plongeon” referring to the species. “Huard” is thus familiar to some French
readers who can at least identify it as a North-American aquatic bird—which would have
been quite sufficient in the context of “The Raft.” By keeping only the “plongeon” part
of the bird’s name, the translators made the footnote necessary: referring to a bird species
that does not exist in France is too technical for most of the French readership; moreover,
such noun is confusing regarding the context of the story because “plongeon” means “a
dive.” This example illustrates a major challenge for translators of horror fiction. The
reality effect is critical in general, but regarding this particular cultural reference at this
particular point of the story, suspense should prevail. In addition, if the hyperonymic
translation of the bird’s name is supposed to maintain the reality effect, the footnote
nevertheless destroys it. Indeed, whenever there is a footnote in fiction, it makes the
reader stop reading to wonder why there is a note at that point. S/he becomes conscious
of his/her act of reading; character identification and the suspension of disbelief are
broken, and all the tension that has been building up disappears. Fear does not
happen in the translated work as it does in the source text because of the translator’s
choice. For this reason, Brèque’s first strategy fails to provide a satisfying answer to the
challenge of the reality effect in description and dialog in fiction, especially not in horror
fiction or in any other fiction where suspense is key to a successful reception.
The second strategy for a translator to deal with artefacts which is listed by Brèque is
that the translator can drop the cultural reference in the target text. The translators of

22
Stephen King, “The Raft,” Skeleton Crew (New York: Putnam, 1985), 313–14.
23
Stephen King, “Le radeau,” in Brume, trans. Michèle Pressé and Serge Quadruppani (Paris: Albin
Michel, 1987), 404.
 The Translation of Fear in Horror Fiction 7

“The Raft” could have done as such in the previous example for the sake of suspense by
translating “loon” using the hyperonym “oiseau” (“bird”): if the reader does not know
what a loon is, s/he probably does not know it has a very characteristic and chilling cry,
so the cultural reference is lost anyway. In such a case, this strategy does not seem too
poor a choice as suspense is preserved. However, in a different context, such a choice
could have terrible consequences for reception. Indeed, dropping a cultural reference can
lead to the possible loss of an important cultural rooting of the story. This is especially
true in dialogs. As Stephen King writes:

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You must tell the truth if your dialogue is to have [. . .] resonance and realism [. . .] and that
holds true all the way down to what folks say when they hit their thumb with the hammer. If
you substitute “Oh sugar!” for “Oh shit!” because you’re thinking about the Legion of
Decency, you are breaking the unspoken contract that exists between writer and reader –
your promise to express the truth of how people act and talk through the medium of a
made-up story. On the other hand, one of your characters [. . .] really might say Oh sugar
instead of Oh shit [. . .]. You’ll know which to use if you know your character, and we’ll learn
something about the speaker that will make him or her more vivid and interesting.24

Vernacular is particularly important to the cultural reality effect in Stephen King’s novels.
However, his work on vernacular transcription is rarely translated or even mentioned, as
the following example from Pet Sematary shows:
“You’re very kind, Mr. Crandall,” Rachel said.
“Not at all,” he said. “Lookin forward to having young ’uns around again.” Except that the
sound of this, as exotic to their Midwestern ears as a foreign language, was yowwuns. “You
just want to watch em around the road, Missus Creed. Lots of big trucks on that road.”25
[« Vous êtes trop gentil, Mr Crandall », dit Rachel.
« C’est la moindre des choses, voyons », dit Crandall. « Ça va être une joie pour nous
d’avoir à nouveau de la jeunesse dans nos parages. Mais faudra pas trop les laisser
s’approcher de la route, m’ame Creed. Il y a beaucoup de gros camions. »]26

The whole comment in the source text on the New Englander accent sounding foreign to
Midwesterners has been cut in the target text; the only trace of a work on vernacular in
the source text left in the translation being the “m’ame”—which does not sound infor-
mal French (they would say “m’dame”) nor North Easterner, but rather Old American
South to French ears. On a larger scale, the strategy of dropping cultural reference may
lead to the non-translation of whole narratives, such as Stephen King’s essay-like story on
baseball “Head Down” or his poem “Brooklyn August” in the short story collection
Nightmares and Dreamscapes (1993). Both texts have not been translated into French on
the basis of French people not knowing anything about baseball—and thus not being
interested in reading about it. The consequence of such a radical strategy is to deprive

24
King, On Writing, 186–87.
25
Stephen King, Pet Sematary (New York: Doubleday, 1983), 9.
26
Stephen King, Simetierre, trans. François Lasquin (Paris: J’ai Lu, 1985), 17.
8 Clotilde Landais

potential readers of discovering a different side of Stephen King’s writing: poetic, instead
of being “solely” a horror-fiction writer.
The third strategy for a translator to deal with artefacts which is mentioned by Brèque
is that the translator can try to find an equivalent to the cultural reference. This tactic can
be compared to Jakobson’s notion of “equivalence in difference”27 which refers to the
necessary transposition of the source message into an equivalent target message through a
different code. In order to maintain the reality effect, this equivalent must belong to the
source culture or to both the source and target cultures. This may explain why the
translator of Pet Sematary chose to translate “missus” as “m’ame” instead of “m’dame,”

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even though the French readership may associate this informal title with the South and
not with the North East of the United States. Indeed, it is very rare to find a true
equivalent. For instance, the translators of “The Raft” could not have found a French
equivalent to a loon as this species forms its own order which does not exist in Western
Europe. Even though there are aquatic birds with toes connected by webbing in France—
ducks for instance—they belong to a different order; thus, translating “loon” as “canard”
would have been a false equivalent. Stephen King’s novel Pet Semetary gives another
example of such a false equivalence: the flowers “African violets”28 are translated as
“Azalées du Japon”29 (“Japanese azalea”). This is a false equivalence as these flowers
belong to different orders. Such a choice, probably made to reflect the exoticism of the
African violets in the New Englander settings, is all the more regrettable that the “violette
africaine” is quite well-known in France, where it is largely cultivated. Finding a satis-
fying equivalence is thus not an easy strategy, particularly because it also means the
translator has to guess what his/her readership may know about the source culture—
and such knowledge changes quite fast, especially nowadays. This is why translations
become outdated and require—or should require for the so-called “popular fiction”—
revisions on a regular basis in order to maintain an accurate reality effect. Nonetheless,
this strategy of equivalence seems to be the less harmful one from a reception’s perspec-
tive to answer the challenge of the reality effect in description and dialog: compared with
a footnote or with the deletion of a cultural reference, finding an equivalent should allow
the reality effect to remain. Moreover, suspense, the second necessary mechanism to a
successful reception of fear, should not suffer either, as such a choice of translation does
not require a change in the narrative rhythm.
Rhythm is indeed the most important aspect of suspense in horror fiction and thus,
the greatest challenge in its translation. The sequence of events and the way they are
organized by the plot obviously participate as much as the choice of words in the creation
of fear in the reader’s mind. According to the critic Michael McDowell, the author of the
source text creates a rhythm in order to propel the reader forward: “A build-up needs a
pay-off, and the pay-off has to be in proper proportion to the build-up. Otherwise, the

27
Roman Jakobson, “On Linguistic Aspects of Translation,” in Language in Literature, ed. Krystina
Pomorska and Stephen Rudy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987), 233.
28
King, Pet Sematary, 14.
29
King, Simetierre, 25.
 The Translation of Fear in Horror Fiction 9

story is unbalanced, and in some way the reader will be dissatisfied.”30 The reader is then
kept in a constant state of tension thanks to what McDowell describes as a series of
interlocking rhythms:
Five sentences that are rhythmically just right form a good paragraph; five good para-
graphs, set up just so, make a good section to be separated by asterisks; six good sections
make a very good chapter; and then all you have to do is write thirty of those, arrange them
in the right order, smooth down the lumps, and now you have a good rhythmic book –
one that propels the reader forward. Prologue to fin.31

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Suspense and rhythm are thus intertwined. The author must build sentences so they
arouse emotion in the reader’s mind and, to produce the same effect in the mind of the
translated work’s reader, the translator should keep the original organization of a narra-
tive: the original cutting of paragraphs, sentences, and parts of sentences to make the
reader of the translated book shiver as if s/he were reading the source version. The
problem here is that different cultures may have a different idea of a well-built sentence
or paragraph. In French for example, authors, translators, and editors prefer complex
sentences rather than simple and short ones, which are identified with a journalistic style
and not with a literary style. Unless they want to create a specific stylistic effect, they also
tend to eliminate repetitions, which are otherwise seen as poor writing.
Two trial French translations (unpublished) of the first page of Jack Ketchum’s no-
vella Off Season (1999) can demonstrate how changes in narrative rhythm can ruin
suspense in a target text:
They watched (1) her cross the meadow and step over the low stone wall, into the woods
beyond. She looked awkward. She would be easy to catch (2).
They took their time. Breaking off the white birch switches, peeling the bark away. They
could hear her moving through the underbrush. They looked at one another and smiled,
but said nothing. They peeled the switches, and then they started after her.
???
She thanked God for the moonlight. She had nearly missed seeing the old cellar hole, and
it was deep. Now she moved carefully around it and kept running, through the long grass
and cattails, past white pine, black pine, birch, and poplar. Beneath her feet moss and
lichen. The scent of rot and evergreen. She heard them tumble through (3) the slashing
behind her, their voice light and musical; children playing in the dark. She remembered
their hands (4) on her; coarse strong little hands (4) with long sharp dirty nails that raked
her skin as they clutched at her. She shuddered. She heard (5) them laughing close behind
(6). In front of her (6), the forest thickened.]32
[Ils la virent (1) traverser le pré et enjamber le muret de pierre, se dirigeant vers la forêt.
Elle paraissait désorientée. Une proie facile (2).

30
Michael McDowell, “The Unexpected and the Inevitable,” in Kingdom of Fear: The World of Stephen
King, ed. Tim Underwood and Chuck Miller (New York: New American Library, 1986), 86.
31
McDowell, “The Unexpected and the Inevitable,” 84–85.
32
Jack Ketchum, Off Season (Hiram, GA: Overlook Connection Press, 1999), 3–4.
10 Clotilde Landais

Ils prirent le temps d’arracher les branches de bouleau blanc, d’enlever l’écorce. Ils l’enten-
daient progresser dans le sous-bois. Ils échangèrent des sourires en silence. Une fois les
baguettes dénudées, ils se lancèrent à sa poursuite.
Sans le clair de lune, elle serait tombée par la bouche béante menant à la vieille cave - et elle
semblait profonde. Elle l’évita soigneusement et poursuivit sa course à travers les herbes
hautes et les massettes, cernée par les pins noirs et les pins argentés, les bouleaux et les
peupliers. Ses pieds foulaient un matelas de mousse et de lichen exhalant des odeurs de
pourriture et de conifères. Dans son dos, elle les entendait gambader (3) sur la piste qu’elle
avait ouverte; des voix légères et flûtées d’enfants qui jouent dans le noir. Elle se souvint de

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leurs petites mains (4), grossières et fortes, des ongles longs, sales et affilés sur sa peau,
quand ils s’étaient agrippés à elle. Elle frissonna. Distingua (5) leurs rires de plus en plus
proches. Devant elle (6), la forêt s’épaississait.]33

First, (2) and (5) are likely to create confusion in the French reader’s mind. In the source
text, the first two paragraphs are clearly from the “they” point of view and then we shift
to “she” after a line break. This is kept in the translation, except for (2), which becomes a
nominal sentence. The absence of grammatical subject and verb here creates confusion
regarding the perspective, because the French reader may think the feminine character is
aware of being an easy prey, which is not the case in the source text. Moreover, (5) creates
a false causal interaction as the verb is conjugated in the wrong past tense (in “passé
simple” instead of “imparfait”): in the target text, the reader understands that the fem-
inine character shudders because of the memory of the children’s hands on her body and
then, she hears them laughing, but this does not seem to trigger any reaction. In the
source text, the reader understands that she shudders because of the memory, but also
because she hears them getting closer. The source narrative thus generates more tension
than the target version. Second, (4) is too long—even by French standards—because the
translator wants to avoid the repetition of the word “hands” (“mains”). Unfortunately
here, the length of the sentence is not the only problem the elimination of the repetition
causes. Without the repetition, the target structure invalidates the surprise effect of
discovering that the pursuers are children. This example shows how, in attempting to
naturalize the passage in accordance with French norms for lexical style, the translator has
generated a much more serious shortcoming. Third, (1) and (3) are mistranslations,
which both ruin the oppressive effect by creating a different ambiance in the target text:
“voir” means “to see,” which is definitely less harrowing than “to watch,” and
“gambader” refers to someone—generally a child—who walks and jumps joyfully, not
“tumble through” something, pursuing someone to do harm. Finally, the effect of trap
created in (6) by the juxtaposition of “behind” and “in front of her” is lost because
“behind” has not been translated. Without being an unfaithful translation, this target
text does not give the right pace or the right ambiance to the beginning of the novel,
which ruins the oppressing effect of the chase, and thus, suspense.
[Ils la regardèrent (1) traverser le pré et enjamber le petit muret pour s’engager dans les
bois. Elle avait l’air maladroite. Elle serait facile à attraper (2).

33
Communication to the article’s author. Translation proposed to Editions Bragelonne in 2005.
 The Translation of Fear in Horror Fiction 11

Ils prirent leur temps. Pour briser les baguettes de bouleau blanc, les écorcer. Ils l’enten-
daient se déplacer dans le sous-bois. Ils se regardèrent et sourirent, sans rien dire. Ils
pelèrent les tiges, puis se lancèrent à ses trousses.
???
Elle remercia Dieu pour le clair de lune. Un peu plus et elle n’aurait pas vu le trou d’une
ancienne cave, et il était profond. Elle le contourna avec précaution et reprit sa course
parmi les hautes herbes et les typhae, passant devant des pins blancs, des pins noirs, des
bouleaux et des peupliers. Sous ses pieds, de la mousse et du lichen. L’odeur de la
pourriture et des conifères. Elle les entendit se déplacer (3) dans les branchages derrière

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elle, leurs voix claires et musicales; des enfants jouant dans l’obscurité. Elle se souvint de
leurs mains (4) sur elle; de petites mains (4) rugueuses et fortes aux ongles sales, longs et
tranchants, qui avaient labouré sa peau comme ils s’étaient accrochés à elle. Elle frissonna.
Elle les entendait (5) rire, derrière elle (6), tout près. Devant elle (6), la forêt
s’épaississait.]34

The second trial translation is truer to the source text: first, (2) is a complete sentence,
with a grammatical subject which gives the same point of view as the source text. (5) does
not create a false interaction as the “imparfait” tense is used; the French reader thus
understands the state of mind of the character as the English reader does. Second, (4)
keeps the repetition of the words “mains”/“hands” and thus maintains the surprise effect
that the pursuers are children. Third, (1) and (3) have been translated with more accurate
vocabulary (“regarder” for “to watch” and “se déplacer” for “to tumble through”), which
frames the passage in accordance with the author’s intent. Finally, by juxtaposing “devant
elle”/“in front of her” and “derrière elle”/“behind her,” (6) creates the same effect of a
trap as the source text. By staying closer to the source text regarding grammatical struc-
ture and sentence organization, this second translation is thus much more likely to make
its reader shiver as if s/he were reading the source version. As it keeps the original
rhythm, it should indeed allow suspense to work properly in the reader’s mind.
Finally, another challenge to suspense is overtranslation. This happens when the
translator gives more information than the source text, either by explaining something
which was left untold in the source text, or by choosing words that have a different—
wider or more specific—meaning as the source text’s words. Here is an example of
overtranslation coming from Stephen King’s Pet Sematary:
Church had been dead, that was one thing; he was alive now and that was another; there
was something fundamentally different, fundamentally wrong about him, and that was a
third. Something had happened.35
[Primo, Church avait réellement été tué; secundo, il était revenu à la vie; tertio, il avait
changé, changé du tout au tout, et à présent, il y avait en lui quelque chose de foncière-
ment maléfique. Que s’était-il donc passé?]36

34
Communication to the article’s author. Translation proposed to Editions Bragelonne in 2005.
35
King, Pet Sematary, 139.
36
King, Simetierre, 217.
12 Clotilde Landais

In this passage, “wrong” has been translated as “maléfique,” which means “evil.” At this
point of the story, the reader does not know in what way the cemetery changes the beings
that are resuscitated there—s/he can only guess based on the kind of book s/he is reading.
Saying that there is something evil about the cat Church then sets different expectations
in the mind of the target text’s reader and modify his/her perception of suspense in the
story.
Overtranslating is not to be confused with Genette’s prolepsis37—or foreshadowing—
which consists in announcing events (such as the death of a character) which will happen
only later in the story. Stephen King is known for using prolepsis as strategic auctorial

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comments as it allows him to generate more suspense: if character identification and
suspension of disbelief have been properly set through a successful reality effect, the
reader indeed wants to know how such event will happen. Unlike overtranslation, prolepsis
is well thought out by the author and is always used in a timely manner. By saying more
than intended by the author at the wrong moment, the overtranslating translator actually
spoils suspense and frames the story differently for the target reader. Here again, the best
strategy to avoid such a trap is to keep the original organization of the narrative and to
carefully choose vocabulary in order to convey the same atmosphere and put the target
reader in the same frame of mind as the source reader.
Translating horror fiction is thus not as easy as some would like to believe. The genre
relies on two complementary mechanisms, the reality effect and suspense, in order to
induce a specific feeling in the reader’s mind: fear, whether it is caused by a natural or
supernatural phenomenon, and whether it is tinged with respect, such as terror, or with
revulsion, such as horror. Reception is then key to horror fiction, which makes the
genre’s translation a very delicate matter. The reality effect and suspense must indeed
be transposed from the source text and culture into the target ones in order for the target
reader to experience the specific degrees of fear intended by the author of the source text.
As shown in this study, there is no other general rule to be followed by translators of
horror fiction than one of balance: translators of horror fiction must take the story into
account to properly choose which mechanism should prevail at a specific point of the
narrative. The reality effect is usually more important at the beginning of horror fiction
narratives, especially in the supernatural variety because, as Roger Caillois explains, the
more rational and lifelike the initial fictional universe, the easier it can be destroyed by
the supernatural.38 In order to make the fictional universe believable to the reader,
translators of horror fiction must carefully thread their way between naturalization
and foreignization. Indeed, extreme naturalization can lead to the loss of cultural rooting
and, thus, destroy the reality effect, while extreme foreignization can prevent character
identification, as Ricœur points out through the notion of resistance. In both cases, the
reader is prevented from feeling fear and the narrative loses its raison d’être. However,
once the fictional universe is solidly established, allowing character identification and the
suspension of disbelief, suspense should then become the priority. It is mainly through

37
Gérard Genette, Figures III (Paris: Seuil, 1972), 82.
38
Roger Caillois, Anthologie du fantastique 1 (Paris: Gallimard, 1966), 10.
 The Translation of Fear in Horror Fiction 13

narrative rhythm that fear will be induced in the reader’s mind. The best way for horror
fiction translators to not ruin suspense is to stay as close as possible to the original textual
structure. By keeping the grammatical and vocabulary choices as well as the sentence
organization of the source text, translators should be able to reproduce the rhythm
intended in the source text. This should allow the reader to experience fear as intended
by the author of the source text. It is thus only through a careful reading of the narrative
and a real understanding of the writing of fear and its mechanisms that translators of
horror fiction may achieve a proper reception of the target text. This is why the role of
the translator is so important in horror fiction: on his/her choice of intervention depend

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the success or the failure of the narrative in the reader’s mind as well as the literary and
commercial success or failure of the book—and its author—in a given country.

Notes on Contributor
A former director of translations at a Parisian publishing house and a translator herself,
Clotilde Landais is now an Assistant Professor at Purdue University (USA). Her research
and teaching include North American genre fiction and translation theories. She notably
published articles and book chapters on Stephen King, as well as a monograph entitled
Stephen King as a Postmodern Author (Peter Lang Publishing, 2013).